"USING OUR IMAGINATIONS"
By J. A. Elliott 2023
When I was a boy growing up during the 1950’s and 60’s in my home town of Mansfield, I was a Cowboy, Roy Rogers, Hop-along Cassidy or the Lone Ranger. I remember the little sheriff’s outfit I had, with it’s star of silver, and the cap guns that sat in their leather holsters on either side of my hips. The old brush from the yard was my makeshift horse as I ran down Bancroft Lane shouting ‘Hi Ho Silver’ and waving one of my cap pistols in the air, the smell of spent sulphur wafted my nostrils as I shot a few rounds at the baddies, lurking near the bushes. We would swap around a bit, some days being the goodies, others being Billy the Kid and his band of outlaws.
Sometimes I was a spaceman like Dan Dare from my comics, or the great Flash Gordon fighting to save earth from the evil Emperor Ming, our rocket ship being an old abandoned pram that’s seen better days, but to my friends and me it was whatever our imaginations could make it, from a boat in our pirate adventures to a world war two Spitfire shooting down a German Messerschmitt in a dog fight over our little Mansfield town.
One day I was Superman, with my red jumper tied around my neck to form a cape as I flew down our street to stop that runaway train and rescuing the damsel in distress, well one of my sisters laying on the pavement, shouting ‘Help Me, Help me Superman’
I was a crack commando wearing the balaclava that my mum had knitted, with mud on my face I fought my way to the old hut across the overgrown field, after all it was a German fortress and I had to knock out those machine gun posts, throwing small stones as pretend grenades to blow them up.
Another day, and another game, today I was a knight in shinning armour wearing a colander on my head, and the old dustbin lid as a shield, and a small garden cane as a sword. I was Lancelot or Galahad, King Arthur or Percival, defending the round table from the fierce dragon that lived at the bottom of our garden. It was the neighbours growling pet dog really, but to us it was our dragon for the day.
Our games were only limited to our own imagination. Every Saturday my friends and I would go to the Granada cinema, the sixpenny rush as it was affectionately known, to see our hero’s on the big screen, then rush home and re-enact what we had seen within our own games, adding bits to the plot here and there, as we went along.
These were the days of great adventures, where games and imaginations knew no bounds. A time of innocent fun as we frolicked in the sunshine enjoying the fresh air, after all, we only had a few real toys so we had to use our imaginations. I cannot remember ever being bored when I was growing up during the 1950’s. My friends and I always found something to do or some game to play. We didn’t have home computers; we didn’t have laptops, mobile phones, tablets or games consoles, all we had was ourselves and our own creative imaginations, using whatever we had around us, and like the song “We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun But the hills that we climbed were just seasons out of time”
The memories of those far away days still linger on, as vivid a picture in my mind as they ever were. My friends from my childhood games have all now past away and I alone am left with these treasured memories of our long summer days together playing in the sun.
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